


so quite a new thing

by Lirazel



Category: Infinite (Band), K-POP RPF, K-pop, Korean Pop, Kpop-Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-12
Updated: 2012-12-12
Packaged: 2017-11-21 01:23:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/591843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lirazel/pseuds/Lirazel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“I could swear sometimes that all the inanimate objects in the world have declared some sort of vendetta against you.”</i>  Sungyeol's hurt himself <i>again</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	so quite a new thing

There’s a bang and a pained, shrieked curse, and Woohyun’s stomach tries to hurl itself out of his mouth. _Fuckfuckfuck. Not again, Yeol, what is it this time?_ His phone—expensive and new—clatters to the ground as he hurls himself off the bed and out into the hall, so fast his sock-clad feet slip on the slick floor and he almost goes down. And almost goes down again when he makes it around the corner and sees—blood. 

Blood on hands blood on floor blood on face—

“Sungyeol!”

Sungyeol is groaning a whining groan when he raises his head to look at Woohyun. Woohyun has to grab onto the wall for support. “Fuck, Sungyeol, what did you _do_?” he breathes, and the question is everything he is.

Sungyeol’s hand is pressed against his nose trying—uselessly—to staunch the flow of blood, and it makes the sheepish grin he gives Woohyun look macabre. But he doesn’t get to answer because Sungjong—the only other member currently at home—speeds around the corner and bumps into Woohyun’s back.

“What the fuck, hyung?” he gasps, and then Woohyun is pushing him away, rushing over to Sungyeol and dropping to his knees beside him.

“Go get Hyoan-hyung to bring the car around—we need to get him to the hospital,” Woohyun orders, and later Sungjong will tease him that he sounded like he was imitating Sunggyu’s I’m-the-leader-don’t-fuck-with-me voice, but in the moment Woohyun is just amazed he can get the words out when it feels like his heart is pounding inside his mouth. 

Sungjong, for once, scurries off without a rebellious glare, but Sungyeol just shakes his head, hand still clutching his nose. “It’s not that big of a deal, I don’t need to go to the—what the fuck are you doing?”

“Move your hand,” Woohyun commands tersely, balling up the shirt he’s just pulled off and trying not to squirm at the way Sungyeol is staring as his now-bare torso.

“You’re going to ruin it—it’s just a nose-bleed,” Sungyeol protests when Woohyun tries to bring the fabric to his nose, Sungyeol slapping his hand away with his not-covered-with-blood one.

“It’s just a shirt,” Woohyun says, and then he manages to pry Sungyeol’s hand away and presses the shirt gently to his nose. It’s Woohyun, not Sungyeol, who winces as he does.

Sungyeol, on the other hand, rolls his eyes and sighs as though he’s just humoring Woohyun, and maybe he is, but Woohyun needs to do this. There’s _blood_. _Sungyeol_ ’s blood. 

“Fucking hell, Yeol, can’t you make it through one day without getting yourself injured or sick?” Maybe the words are teasing, but Woohyun isn’t joking. The hand that isn’t holding the t-shirt curls up into a fist, nails digging into his palm with the force it takes to keep himself from reaching out and touching Sungyeol (anywhere—anywhere, to make sure he’s here and whole and not going anywhere).

Sungyeol shrugs as though it it’s no big deal that he’s sitting there with blood gushing out of his nose, sitting there like he’s not in pain at all, patiently letting Woohyun hold the shirt to his nose. “It’s not like I ask for these things to happen.” His voice sounds muffled like it did that time he had such a bad head cold that someone had to sit in the room with him while he slept to make sure he’d actually breathe (Woohyun had been the one to volunteer, and nobody fought him for that job). 

“What did happen?” Woohyun isn’t sure he wants to know, doesn’t want another item to add to his list of ‘Inanimate Objects That Seem Bent on Hurting Sungyeol’ (it’s chronological, from the broom in the hallway three days after Sungyeol joined Woollim as a trainee to the confetti cannon a couple of weeks ago), but he can’t not ask.

Sungyeol just points over Woohyun’s shoulder, and Woohyun glances away from the blooming red stain on the t-shirt long enough to see the iron bar lying on the floor. “What the fuck?” The only thing he can think of involving an iron bar is someone coming in and trying to hit Sungyeol with it, but that can’t be it—Woohyun would have _heard_ something and the door is still closed and— 

“I was doing pull-ups,” Sungyeol explains. “I’m trying to get my arms back,” he adds, as though Woohyun hasn’t noticed. “And I was in the middle of one and it came loose from the wall and hit my nose and—“

“I get it,” Woohyun interrupts, and all he really wants to do is tell Sungyeol that idol physique can fuck itself—he’d rather Sungyeol lose that (fucking hot) definition he’s gained in his arms and turn into a dough-ball than see him get hurt again. But he can’t say that of course. “I could swear sometimes that all the inanimate objects in the world have declared some sort of vendetta against you.”

Sungyeol laughs a honking laugh, then winces, and Woohyun feels that wince through his whole body. “And the bugs and viruses.”

“Definitely,” Woohyun confirms because he’d said it once and he’d meant it: Sungyeol is sick or injured 364 days of out of the year. “You must have done something to piss them off.” Woohyun can’t imagine Sungyeol doing anything to deserve the amount of pain and sickness he has to put up with.

“Well, they haven’t done me in yet,” Sungyeol says, voice flippant, and Woohyun is about to reply, but Sungjong bursts back in through the door, face flushed.

“Hyung is bringing the van around.”

“Good. Go get an ice pack from the freezer,” Woohyun commands, and again, Sungjong doesn’t hesitate, just obeys. Apparently the only way to get him to listen is to have cameras around or for one of the members to be bleeding.

“It must be the universe’s way of balancing things out,” Woohyun mutters, staring at the scarlet bleeding through the t-shirt as Sungjong hurries away.

“What the fuck does that mean?” Sungyeol asks, and Woohyun knows he shouldn’t answer— _knows_ —but somehow the words are coming out anyway.

“It means that the universe knows it isn’t fair to anyone else for you to be as amazing as you are, so to balance things out it made you the most accident-prone person on earth.”

Sungyeol lets out a half-laugh, strangled by the trauma to his nose and dying off as he realizes that Woohyun wasn’t just playing around. Woohyun could _kill_ himself, his whole body tensing up at the silence that follows, and it would be so easy to raise his eyes to Sungyeol’s—they’re _right there_ —but he keeps his gaze on the t-shirt in his hand instead. _Fuck, Sungyeol, you have to quit getting yourself hurt; I’m not sure how much more of this I can take before I…._

He can feel Sungyeol so close to him, warm and there, his knee pressed into Woohyun’s thigh, but Sungyeol isn’t saying anything so Woohyun doesn’t say anything either—maybe later he can convince Sungyeol that he was in shock and he only just imagined Woohyun saying something like that to him. The silence is just about to crack him in two when Sungjong comes skidding around the corner again.

“Here, hyung,” he says, holding out one of the ice packs they keep in the freezer at all times (there are always aches and pains to soothe in an idol household, and their first-aid kit is well stocked).

Woohyun takes it silently, still avoiding Sungyeol’s eyes, though he fancies he can feel them on his face. He shifts the t-shirt to his other hand so he can press the ice pack to the back of Sungyeol’s neck and then there are Sungyeol’s hands brushing against his, taking the t-shirt from him. “I’ve got this,” Sungyeol says and something in his voice makes Woohyun raise tentative eyes to his. Sungyeol’s normally expressive eyes are unreadable, and Woohyun’s hand falls to his lap as he swallows hard. _Pretend I didn’t say it. Please, Yeol. Please._

But he doesn’t know if Sungyeol gets the message because Sungjong’s phone is dinging and the maknae is telling them, “Hyung’s at the door, let’s go, Sungyeol-hyung.”

Woohyun rises with him—he’s still holding the ice pack to the back of Sungyeol’s neck—and he’s about to look around for his shoes to slip on when Sungjong pushes him aside, taking the ice pack out of his hand. “You’re not wearing a shirt, hyung, you stay here.”

Woohyun glances down at his chest, staring at it blankly before he realizes what Sungjong means. “No, it’ll only take a second, I’ll grab—“

“Just stay here, hyung, I’ll take care of him,” Sungjong interrupts, and then he’s holding the pack to Sungyeol’s neck and steering him out of the room and Woohyun is left staring at the door that slams closed behind them. 

It’s very, very quiet in the dorm, so quiet that Woohyun can hear the elevator doors ping open down the hall, and when he looks down at his hand there’s a smear of blood across it. 

 

 

If there’s one thing Sunggyu prides himself on, it’s his responsibility as a leader, so it’s very unlike him to allow his phone to die. But he’s been so exhausted since the whole solo thing started and even though promotions are technically over now he’s still felt like he hasn’t had a spare second to breathe, so he figures he can forgive himself just this once for forgetting to charge it. That is, until he walks through the suspiciously empty living room and into the kitchen to find Woohyun with six different pots simmering on the stove and a mound of vegetables waiting next to his cutting board. 

“Woohyun, what are you—“

Woohyun looks up from his chopping, knife pausing mid-mince as he meets Sunggyu’s eyes, and Sunggyu’s stomach sinks down to his knees at the look in those familiar eyes. 

“Fuck,” Sunggyu curses. “How did he hurt himself this time? Did one of the hyungs take him to the hospital? What have you heard?”

Woohyun’s mouth tightens till his lips go thin and white—it makes him look like a completely different person—and he jerks his head to the phone resting on the counter beside an onion. Sunggyu swipes it up, types in the code (he knows Woohyun’s even though he’d never use it without Woohyun’s permission), and breathes a sigh of relief at the text from Sungjong: _he’s fine not broken. stop worrying hyung it doesn’t help. we’ll be home soon._

Sunggyu really wants to know what happened— _what_ isn’t broken?—but he knows he isn’t going to get Woohyun to talk when he’s all knotted up with worry like this, so he puts the phone back down and pats Woohyun on the shoulder before leaving the kitchen, the sound of furious chopping and the hissing of boiling water following after him.

 

 

“Hey.”

Sungyeol sees Woohyun’s eyes sweep over him for the briefest of moments (as though he’s checking to make sure Sungyeol hasn’t injured himself any more in the brief time they’ve been apart) before returning to his laptop screen. “Hey.”

Sungyeol edges further into the bedroom, eyes fixed on where Woohyun is sitting on Sunggyu’s bed. “Uh, thanks for dinner, it was great.” It was _amazing_ actually, and there had been more of it than they could all eat, especially when Woohyun just jabbed his chopsticks into his bowl and didn’t actually put anything in his mouth. Woohyun had cooked food enough to feed three idol groups, and they’ll have leftovers for a week. Hoya had teased him about how Woohyun coped with worry the same way Hoya’s mom does, but Woohyun had ignored him. And he hadn’t looked at Sungyeol once through the whole meal, not after Sungyeol and Sungjong arrived back from the hospital with a bandage plastered on Sungyeol’s nose and a confirmation that while it definitely wasn’t broken, it would be pretty badly bruised for a while.

“You’re welcome,” Woohyun says stiffly, staring hard at the screen like it contains the secrets of life.

Sungyeol shuffles forward again. “It was really great coming home to that after sitting at the hospital for so long.”

Woohyun makes a noncommittal noise and scrolls. 

Another couple of steps. “I don’t know why they make you wait that long and then keep you around forever after they’ve told you you’re fine. You’d think they’d want to get you out as quickly as they can, but they don’t seem to care about that.”

“Hmm.”

Sungyeol’s knees hit the edge of Sunggyu’s bed and he thinks he sees the muscles in Woohyun’s hands tense. “The company’s going to have to release some sort of statement because I think one of those nurses was an Inspirit and, besides, I’m going to have a nasty bruise.”

Woohyun doesn’t say anything at all this time, and Sungyeol is starting to get annoyed. “I guess the War Against Sungyeol isn’t going very well for my enemies, considering that they can’t even manage to break my nose. I mean, when you think about it, the lack of any permanent damage means they must be pretty bad at their jobs, right? I mean, here I am, still in one piece.”

The explosion isn’t entirely unexpected—Sungyeol knows what he’s doing when he prods at someone’s patience—but it still makes him jump. “Stop _talking_ like that!” Woohyun’s voice is harsh and tinged with something that sounds perilously close to desperation, and okay: now they’re getting somewhere.

Sungyeol leaps in immediately. “Like what? Like I’ve never seriously been injured and I’ve recovered from every illness I’ve had and yet you still worry like a paranoid mother?”

“That’s not the point!” Woohyun snaps, shoving his laptop away from his lap with complete disregard for its safety. “Just because it’s not permanent doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt! And there’s always a first time! One day it _could_ be serious and even if it isn’t, I still hate—“ Woohyun stops himself just in time; his mouth keeps moving but he manages not to let the sounds come out, face flushed and horrified.

“You still hate what?” Sungyeol asks, because of course he does.

Woohyun looks stubbornly away. 

“You still hate what?”

Nothing.

“What do you hate? Woohyun?” Sungyeol kicks at Woohyun’s ankle, and he’s not sure whether it’s the jab or the words that make Woohyun burst again.

“I hate seeing you hurt, okay! I fucking hate seeing you in pain or sick or hurting at all! I hate it and I worry all the time because you’re always fucking hurting yourself and it’s driving me fucking crazy!”

Sungyeol has to fight to keep his face calm. Okay. Okay, there’s confirmation then. That means Woohyun probably did say what Sungyeol had thought he said earlier in the hallway. Sungyeol had floated the theory that he’d lost too much blood and was hallucinating, but the doctor had assured him he hadn’t lost nearly enough blood for that. Still, Sungyeol hadn’t been sure, not till now.

Woohyun is staring miserably at his hands knotted in his lap, and he looks so young and vulnerable that Sungyeol has to take in a deep breath. He sits down slowly on the bed and tries to think of how to handle this.

“You really need to stop worrying so much, you’ll kill yourself if you keep this up.”

Woohyun snorts, though he still sounds guarded. “Yeah, like it’s that easy.”

“I know it’s not,” Sungyeol says, and Woohyun gives him a skeptical look. “What, like I don’t worry about you?”

Woohyun goes very still and then swallows. “Of course you don’t.”

Sungyeol laughs shortly. “Of course I do.”

Woohyun is quiet for a moment, seemingly needing the time to let that sink in, and then his brow wrinkles. “What’s there to worry about?” he asks, and he honestly sounds like he can’t think of a single thing, the idiot.

Sungyeol is the one who snorts this time. “Um, your tendency to work yourself to death and not know when to stop? The fact that you want to make everybody else happy all the time and never take a second to think about yourself? And, oh, yeah, the fact that you don’t eat enough to keep a twelve-year-old girl alive?”

Sungyeol’s pretty sure the look on Woohyun’s face means that he’s torn between being pleased (and shocked) that Sungyeol notices things about him and dismissiveness because he thinks those things aren’t worth worrying about. Idiot. “You don’t need to worry about me,” Woohyun protests.

Sungyeol shrugs. “I’ll stop worrying when you start eating like a regular person.”

Woohyun shoots him a mutinous look. “And I’ll stop worrying when you stop getting sick or injured every five seconds.”

“I guess we’ll both be worrying about each other for a while then.”

“I guess we will.”

They’re quiet for a moment, the only sounds the hum of Woohyun’s laptop’s fan and the tinny music of whatever video game the guys are playing out in the living room. Sungyeol’s eyes are on Woohyun’s hands fidgeting in his lap, though he doesn’t think Woohyun notices. Still, he jumps when out of nowhere Woohyun says, a little too loud, “Sungyeol, about what I said earlier—“

“Yeah, about that,” Sungyeol says, and he really doesn’t want to have that discussion because he hates awkward things and there’s no way it won’t be awkward, so the only thing to do is lean over and kiss him.

The gasp Woohyun lets out when Sungyeol’s lips meet his sends goosebumps breaking out all over Sungyeol’s skin and for a terrifying half-second, Sungyeol thinks he’s misread everything, misread the way Woohyun touches him (the way Sungyeol lets him), misread the way Woohyun is always the one who wants to take care of him when he’s sick or injured or just moody (the fact that Sungyeol likes it), misread the way Woohyun’s eyes linger on him and the things he’d said in the hall earlier (the way Woohyun makes Sungyeol’s heart race).

But then Woohyun is kissing him back, and Sungyeol would be lying if he said he hadn’t thought about this before, hadn’t thought about Woohyun’s body and his hands and his mouth and his skin—he’s definitely thought about it, at first in an abstract if-I-had-to-choose-a-guy Woohyun-wouldn’t-be-the-worst-person-in-the-world-to-kiss sort of fashion; later in a more serious I-think-he-actually-wants-me-do-I-want-him-back? way. He’s not quite sure when the vague thoughts had coalesced into outright fantasies, but regardless of when that happened, said fantasies didn’t prepare him for the way Woohyun’s lips move under his, for the way Woohyun’s scent wraps itself around him, for the feel of Woohyun’s hand cupping his neck. 

“Really?” Woohyun’s whisper rasps against Sungyeol’s lips, and Sungyeol pulls back just enough to get a good look at him. But his eyes are screwed up, like he doesn’t want Sungyeol to see anything they might give away, and Sungyeol remembers the way his heartbeat hung suspended when he hadn’t been sure Woohyun would kiss him back: he gets that.

“Yeah,” Sungyeol says, and he hadn’t been sure until the word was already coming out of his mouth, but he’s sure now. “Really.”

Woohyun makes a sound that’s half-content half-disbelieving and Sungyeol can’t stop himself from diving back for those lips again, and they part almost immediately, and some time later Sungyeol finds that he’s moving to straddle Woohyun, that Woohyun’s hands are coming up to grab his hips, and Sungyeol’s own fingers are sliding into Woohyun’s hair and when they part to breathe Woohyun’s nose nudges against his and—

“Ow!” Sungyeol yelps, pulling back and covering his face with his hands. “My nose!”

From between his fingers, Sungyeol can see Woohyun’s eyes fly wide till he looks like he belongs in a manhwa and the way he reaches for Sungyeol immediately. “Fuck, Yeol, I’m sorry, I—“ He looks fucking adorable when he’s all concerned like that, but maybe he looks even more adorable when his eyes narrow again and his cheeks flush with fury. “You _asshole_!” he shouts as Sungyeol’s laughter bursts out of his mouth, his shoulders shaking with the force of it. “You _bastard_ , I thought I’d really _hurt_ you—“

Woohyun wrestles him down onto the bed and Sungyeol is laughing so hard he can’t even put up any kind of protest, and when he finally calms down, Woohyun’s face is right above his, his mouth twitching as he tries to keep from laughing and his eyes so dark, his body warm against Sungyeol’s. “You shouldn’t do that again if you want me to believe you when you get hurt. I’ll start to think you’re jerking me around.”

“Well, maybe that’s a good thing—I wanted you to stop worrying, remember?”

Sungyeol sucks in a sharp breath when Woohyun leans down and runs his nose on a path from Sungyeol’s ear, around the corner of his jaw, down his neck and the line of his collarbones, and it doesn’t make any sense for it to affect Sungyeol the way it does—it’s just a _nose_.

“I’m always going to worry about you,” Woohyun says against Sungyeol’s skin and then there’s his tongue and lips and it feels like every centimeter of Sungyeol’s body is reaching to get as close to them as it can. 

“I’m always going to worry about you, too,” he gasps out, fingers twisting in the fabric of Woohyun’s shirt so he can jerk him back far enough to get access to Woohyun’s lips again. 

“I think I can live with that,” Woohyun says when they break apart, and Sungyeol thinks about the way he can feel Woohyun’s gaze on him sometimes as surely as he could feel a touch, the way Woohyun reaches out to him as though reassuring himself that Sungyeol is really there, the way that Woohyun seems to notice all the little things about Sungyeol that he takes least pleasure in showing people—and the way Woohyun seems to understand them, to touch them and accept them and make them not even worth worrying about at all.

“Yeah,” Sungyeol says. “Me, too.”


End file.
